


six of clubs, ace of hearts

by snowandfire



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25741456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowandfire/pseuds/snowandfire
Summary: in his mind, zuko is always screaming and nothing makes the sense that it should, there's a life that was promised but is it what he deserves?
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 131





	six of clubs, ace of hearts

**Author's Note:**

> warning: this is not the way i typically write and if you're a fan of my typical style, this ain't it fam, i was just, idk how this fic happened but it did, here it is

Six of clubs. Ace of hearts. Ten of spades. Mai throws down the cards on the table. One by one. 

“What are you doing?” Zuko asks. 

“I don’t know.” 

Zuko knows what this is. They’re sitting across from each other at the table and Mai is putting down her cards. She’s putting down her cards, and she’s tired and so is he. It’s an old deck, with red swirly paper backs. It belonged to his Uncle. They’ve been here before. This table is familiar. This deck is familiar. She’s familiar. The look in her eyes is familiar. But he can’t do this anymore.

He notices it at night, lying next to her. Feeling the pale rise and fall of her breathing. He doesn’t love her like he used to. Fiercely, deeply. He suspects it too, in the color of her cheeks when she looks at that girl. She’s slipping away from him. Even if she doesn’t want to be. They were promised to each other. And meant to be. This can’t be happening, it can’t. It can’t. 

Three years ago she touched his hands and cupped his face and made him feel whole again with just a look. She touched him and her hands were soft. Soft and kinder than Jet’s ever was. And he was thankful for it.

He loves the way she says his name, he still does. But she speaks and it isn’t magic anymore. She speaks and he doesn’t hang onto her every word. This wasn’t supposed to happen. After all this time, she made him happy. Can’t he at least have this? Why is it so hard to find something that lasts. This at least should have stood the test of time. But maybe he isn’t fated for things to just work. He’s always felt like maybe there’s a bone, or a piece, or a sliver of him that’s just wrong and doesn’t connect right with the whole. With who people are, and what they’re meant to be. And how they’re supposed to find each other. It’s wrong. 

But he feels a debt. A debt that links them together like a great metal chain.  _ You saved me and I owe it to you to stay.  _ This life he’s living is a second life given to him because in her he was able to be normal again and loved after everything...after all that...shit. 

He remembers what she said, “It was shit...it was shit.” 

Sometimes that’s all you need to hear. She never tried to brush anything under the rug and she never told him he was broken or pitiful or any of those things that he hates. He loves her. He  _ still _ does. It aches. It hurts. But he can’t stay here. There’s no pure joy to it anymore. It’s supposed to feel a certain way. 

He touches the black shine of her hair, and it falls like silk through his fingers. Her face is so soft, and smooth and her eyes are like little black oases in an ocean of cream. He could stay. They would be okay together. They could build a life. 

It was different before. Every time she spoke he listened with an active interest. He wanted to say things to make her laugh. She was his favorite, most favorite person in the whole world. And listening to her was like music. A song that he had thought might never end. She was what tied him to the Earth. He’s always been rather dramatic and she wasn’t but there was passion there. There was heat in the way he pushed her down onto the bed. The way she called his name. There was gentleness and a quiet silence made of love in the way she touched his face. 

Where is it now? That rush. Blind rush. Love is adrenaline that sinks back down into comfort. But you need both. Or you can have neither. 

Three of diamonds. Ace of clubs. He puts down his cards. This is the deepest pain he’s felt in a long, long while. 

“I think we should end it.” 

“...Okay.”

* * *

It’s a relief, moving on, but with it comes it’s own problems. He’s blind and alone without anyone to focus on. He’s always needed something, someone. To channel his love into. An obsession of the day. A target. An anchor. 

Like boats with the tide, he meets it when it comes.  _ Sokka _ , with the ever present smile and the aura about him. Invincibility--the kind of optimism that no earthly force can shatter. Though no one else would describe him like that. Zuko’s pulled to him like a magnet. And he needs to be close. He needs to sit close and hear every word coming out of his mouth. Every bad joke. It’s like poetry. But stupid all at the same time. So, so wonderfully stupid. Hearing it makes him feel light for the first time. The first time in a long time. The first time in months. 

Sokka touches him softly too, like Mai, but there’s a roughness to it. A boyishness. It’s salty. And flavorful. And it has color. Sokka’s stories are in full color. Sokka wakes him up and makes him want to live again. Fuck, he’s funny. He’s kind. He’s perfect.  _ Fuck _ . 

_ I want to keep talking to you. I want to hear you laugh. I haven’t felt like this in a long, long time.  _

He is Zuko’s newest obsession. 

_ I’ve never been able to let things go. Did you know that? I think of you all the time, and it’s only because I have a one track mind. I’ve always had to fight to get what I have. I was never lucky, and I built my life from the ground up. Uncle’s the only one that ever believed in me the way I was and I don’t know what to do when he isn’t around. But you’re here. You’re here and you can see me. You can see me. And I can’t take it. I can’t.  _

It eats him from the inside. Every touch of Sokka’s hand...it burns. And he should know that. He’s felt real fucking fire. 

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why?! Why do you have to do this to me, are you crazy?!” 

“What?” Sokka asks, “Oh my god. What happened?”

“I like you. I like you, I’m sorry.” 

“Zuko, I--” 

“Forget it.”

“Zuko.”

“I SAID FORGET IT!”

“Okay. Okay.”

* * *

But Sokka is not someone who forgets easily. The first time they hug it’s a tangle of limbs and its heat and it’s right all at the same time. Zuko doesn’t know how it happened or how it began but he’s sniffing Sokka’s hair and his hands are running up and down Sokka’s mid-section. And he’s grabbing at his clothes and memorizing the moment. Because it could be fleeting. All his happy moments are. 

_ Every time you happen to me all over again. _

They stay together, stuck like glue. Riding out in the mornings, and by each other’s side in the nights. Is it a friendship or something more? What will people write of them, in the centuries to come?  _ I hope you don’t look at just anyone like that. _

No one knows. Least of all him. 

Jack of hearts. Queen of spades. Zuko plays the cards in front of Sokka. 

“What are we doing?” Sokka asks. 

“It’s just a game,”

“I doubt it,”

“I think I’m losing. I’ve never been very good at this.” 

"Maybe let me. I'll let you win."

* * *

Even winning a game comes with it's own problems. A winner's appetite can't be sated. Sometimes Zuko wishes he could go back to the way things were before. With Mai. It made sense, what they were supposed to be to each other. There were rules. Guidelines. Portraits. Now there’s nothing but confusion. Is it love that he feels for Sokka? Can he feel love the right way?

He’s always taken an interest in people and in things in the strangest ways. The swords. That blue mask. It’s strange. He’s strange. Was he like this before? Before the agni kai, or is he like that now? It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. 

He wakes up in a cold sweat hoping to turn back time. 

He picks up the deck of cards. King of hearts.  _ Funny.  _

* * *

Aang scatters the deck to the winds. The cards fly away and Aang pulls them back in ribbons of wind. They land in a perfect circle at Zuko’s feet. 

“I think you know what you have to do.”

“It’s easy for you to say. Wisdom of thousands and all that.”

“We’re more alike than you think, Zuko. You know, it’s never been easy.”

* * *

He tells him I love you, he tells him without a doubt. That he does. That he has for a long time. That Sokka’s is the only touch he feels in his dreams. Awake or asleep he wants to lie with him. He wants to be held and he wants to be touched. And he wants,  _ wants, wants, wants, wants.  _

_ Is that so wrong? IS IT? To want to feel whole again, to feel the touch of a friend and to want it to become the touch of a lover. Is he wrong to believe that he could reach for it too. And maybe touch it, the perfection that is being accepted fully.  _

Zuko could lose everything. He thought he did once, but this is more than that was. This is a love for the ages. He feels everything strongly and losing Sokka will kill him. He knows that much. 

“You know it all. You have all the cards now.” he sinks to his knees. Tears in his eyes. He’s been here before. In another place, in another time, with another man standing before him holding judgement and the future in his hands. 

“I like you too. I like you, I like your mind, and your heart.” 

The words echo into the cliffs behind them, among the grasses and the hills. Sokka’s love sucks the venom out of his body. The anger and the pain. Every inch of him is twilight, and the glow of fireflies. When he touches Zuko he presses down against fire like water and quenches thirst. He’s crazy. Zuko knows that he’s crazy and that his mind is a confused and weird place to be but Sokka can live there. Sokka can stay and make sense of it. 

_ You get me. You get me. You get me. _

Close, close, close. Between the nights and the days. Closing the curtains. The hot heat of bodies together. The feel of kisses and touches and magic and the fire of the heart.  _ I love you, I love you. I love you.  _

Nine of diamonds. Jack of clubs. 

“Why do you still play?”

“No reason, my love, just to remember.” 


End file.
